Rebekah Ford is an interactive designer and developer. She’s lived in Brixton for 20 years, and until recently was commuting out of the area for work. She’s now set up shop locally working from Brixton’s newly launched communal workspace along with other tech, creative and social enterprise start-ups.

“I had no idea there were so many tech-related people living in the area,” Ford said. “I’ve never felt local to the area. I’ve worked in lots of different spaces, such as people’s offices and at home, but just being around people with a collaborative mind-set will be a massive benefit to my business.”

Brixton Impact Hub has been operating on a trial basis since April. It will fully open its doors in mid-May, and already 50 entrepreneurs have expressed interest in joining. Funded by Lambeth council, the Hub sits within Lambeth Town Hall, and aims to offer an affordable base for local entrepreneurs.

With links to 50 other Hubs throughout the world, the first Impact Hub was launched in Islington in 2005; Brixton Impact Hub will draw on their experience to help young businesses get off the ground.

“Since I’ve started taking part in collaborative spaces, I’ve doubled the amount of work I’ve had,” Ford said. “Entrepreneur meet-ups with people in suits, who were not like me, were intimidating, but if you’re in a communal environment where you’re all bringing all your skills to the table you know you’re on to a winner.”

Limited local impact

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, founder of Design Warm, a consultancy specialising in the Internet of Things, agrees. “I think it’s really smart,” she said. “There are a lot of people coming into Brixton at the weekends, but the amount of impact they’re having locally is fairly limited. I think there are a lot of creative people in Brixton who could be putting value into the area.”

Like Ford, Deschamps-Sonsino is moving her business to Brixton. She’s been based in Shoreditch for four years, but cited the expensive rent and commute as major factors in her move. “People are moving south of river," she said. "There is value in being in east London, but it’s not worth the cost involved.”

Lambeth has second highest number of London startups

These two examples of tech business moving to Brixton come at a time when Lambeth council is encouraging entrepreneurship among its residents. Already there has been a host of events to help locals understand how to start a business or expand into new markets.

A Tech City event in November, for example, highlighted routes to funding and encouraged residents to think about how they could be more technically creative. And perhaps these sorts of events have been working, because according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, Lambeth has one of the highest number of business startups, second only to Westminster city council, with 4,255 businesses launching in the borough in 2012.

An emphasis on tech and entrepreneurship in the area, though, comes at a time when Brixton is changing, housing prices are increasing, and middle-class residents are moving in. Along with that, some of Lambeth’s existing residents are falling behind, with 15% not having online access; among social housing tenants, the proportion without access is is 40%.

Thousands of residents need help getting online

This also comes at a time when the government wants to make the internet its primary way of communicating with benefit claimants, including accessing the universal credit system. For Lambeth residents to do this, an estimated 27,500 of them will need support getting online, and of those about 23,300 will need an hour of basic support. The remaining 4,200 will require a minimum of five hours of training, with a quarter of those potentially needing up to 15 or 20 hours of help.

So what is Lambeth council doing to help these people? It's decided to launch Digi-buddies, a scheme using volunteers with strong IT skills, to help these residents understand the internet. Several councils across the country have launched similar schemes: Peterborough has a Fibre to the Future programme and Merthyr Tydfil has a programme called Get Merthyr Tydfil Online.

'I don't have time for the internet'

But not everyone is welcoming digital inclusion. Tony Benest, who has owned and run the Brixton Wholefoods shop for 30 years, said: “I’m too busy to learn about the internet. I work 70, 80 or 90 hours a week, every week, and I don’t have time.” He said the council’s emphasis on entrepreneurship is a “desperate measure to get people into work, and if the cost of living continues to rise, and the wages in the area are staying rock bottom, there’s a much bigger issue that needs to be addressed”.

Referring to the programmes introduced by Lambeth to help residents as “pet projects”, Benest added that he was more concerned about the empty shop next door, which is being advertised for twice his rent. “When my rent comes up for review in a few years, I don’t know what the area will be. Brixton seems to be taking off and basically leaving a great many people behind or kicking them out altogether.”